Part 5: Call to Heaven

We were created by God to know, love and serve him in this life, and to be happy with God here and in the hereafter – heaven.

Heaven is not a place, like Iowa, but rather the experience of perfect union with God and with all other reconciled humanity.

We are created with a desire for the Infinite, to want to touch Transcendence, to commune with the Divine. We seek this, often without being aware that we are.

We fumble about, wanting to be made whole and to quiet our desiring, but left frustrated, even sad, because we look in all the wrong places, the low places.

Created things are lovely, yes, but they are not are not adequate to the task of making us whole or quieting our desiring, only God is.

Our desiring is infinite. Only something infinite can quiet our desiring. Only God is infinite. As St. Augustine wrote: You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you!

And so, we will fumble about and be frustrated until we choose to be a disciple of Jesus and a member of his Catholic Church.

The Resurrection of Jesus confirms that following him is the true way to touch Transcendence, to commune with the Divine, to quiet our restless desiring.

As friendship with Jesus deepens, we look more to God to quiet our desiring, which becomes perfectly at rest after death, when we experience heaven.

Heaven is our perfect and eternal union with God, with our desiring satisfied completely and forever; that’s why we say that the saints rest in peace.

Where do you look to satisfy your desiring: in all the low places, or in your friendship with Jesus?

This is part of a vocations series by Archbishop Jackels titled, "What does God want me to be?" that was published between July and November of 2019.

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